


upon the cave walls

by robinsegg



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Forests, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Sleeping In Trees, the beast that is summer, the sepia toned child and his rip van winkle-esque day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robinsegg/pseuds/robinsegg
Summary: Every time Adam would think back to that day, whether he be five or nine or twelve or seventeen, the hour felt endlessly longer, impossibly longer. Maybe when he was forty, Adam would find he was still lost in those woods, maybe. Sat on a tree trunk or trying to squeeze himself in a tree’s cavity or simply sat on the floor, among the dust and earth and rocks, trying not to cry, failing not to cry, wondering why he was so scared of never finding his way back if that was all he wanted.
Relationships: Adam Parrish & Cabeswater
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	upon the cave walls

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all, I am working on all of my things and have a million different aus I am working on but I wrote this small little thing because I have a lot of love for Adam and for we abuse survivors everywhere. I hope you enjoy

It was the first day of summer and the last day of fourth grade.

Mrs. Wallace sent them off with goodie bags and hugs and quiet words. As kids tripped out of the door and ran into the agony of melting summer days Adam lingered, packing up his things as slowly and quietly as possible. He didn’t offer any questions and she didn’t deign to ask any. She simply turned to her desk and began packing it up. The classroom was bare in comparison to the beginning of the year, posters and children’s drawings repossessed for the coming year, supplies hoarded for what meager rations the children of the next age would have to feast on. Adam felt awfully cold in the sweltering heat, all of nine with scabby knees and bandages all over his body and a solemn little look on his face most people didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at.

It was a peaceful quiet. Mrs. Wallace hummed and said, “Aren’t you excited for summer break, Adam?” And Adam hummed and said, “Yes I am, Mrs. Wallace ma’am.”

He was realizing that people lived lives different from him, that the world wasn’t simply the trailer park and the school and the walk between the two, and it was breaking his heart. He felt his heart tear in two as he thought of Mrs. Wallace getting into her little car and driving away and becoming another little person in another little car in an army of little cars speeding away to wherever people went when they passed over the farthest little hill Adam could see. He wanted to scream and shout that Mrs. Wallace was important, that she mattered and she couldn’t just become another stranger, and he didn’t know if he was angry or if he was sad.

And then came the time to go. And Adam looked at Mrs. Wallace in his quiet little way, and when she hugged him he wanted to cry, and when he didn’t he could feel something shift inside him, just a little to the left.

And all she said was “Don’t forget about me when you’re gone, Adam. Now, have a lovely break.”

Adam wanted to say, “don’t forget about me either,” but he wasn’t sure how, and he wasn’t sure why, and then it was too late, because he was walking away.

The walk home was sweltering, a lazy sort of heat that made Adam want to lie down in the dirt and just be quiet for a while, just be able to feel the heat roll off him. The sun shone bright, rolling wave after wave beating down upon his head, and it was a hell made almost worse for the beauty around him. The world seemed to be on fire, and it was gorgeous in a way that made Adam want to cry, because he always wanted to cry, because he was always sad, because he was always angry, because he was always tired. 

And then he began to slow down. Adam’s walk was brisk, head-down, a quick shuffle to the only world he felt bouncing around inside him. But he didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to feel his heartbeat match up with the people around him. He was tired. His bandages were attributed to clumsiness and a lack of awareness of the body, as if it wasn’t stiff and present at all times, always present, always there with him. So he slowed down. And then he began to wobble a little. Moved off the sidewalk onto the street moved off the street onto the sidewalk moved off the sidewalk onto the grass and so on.

He just wanted to hide, a little. Lie down a bit. He had dreams sometimes, of crawling under the blankets or under the couch cushions and falling inside, into that deep dark blackness where socks and pocket change found themselves going into. He thought it’d be quiet. Adam thought it’d be safe. He thought it’d be nice to have a hole to sit in, warm and comforting and a place where he wasn’t needed wasn’t hungry wasn’t tired wasn’t sad. A place where he didn’t need to feel or breathe or speak.

The sun was high, a cold and unruly king, and Adam’s brown skin roasted. When Adam was four, he got lost in the ‘woods’ behind his ‘house.’ These were glorified terms, words that were forces of nature attributed to shacks of ideas instead. The woods behind his house were more a copse of dying, spindly and sickly trees, and his house wasn’t a house. Nonetheless, the world was made for giants when he was four, and five, and nine, and fifteen, and he was lost crawling atop the corpses of Goliaths. The bleakness natural to his environment was conducive to running away and never looking back under the pretense of make believe games, which Adam never participated in, because he wasn’t creative enough, or creative in the right way, so he would simply slip away. In the woods he fantasized about living there forever or finding a secret passageway to somewhere else, somewhere color splashed across every part of his world and he was, selfishly, hopelessly, loved. 

When Adam was four, he got lost in the woods. It was only for an hour, really, a product of getting his sense of direction all turned around, and he didn’t get in trouble because no one noticed, but that hour felt like three, felt like five, felt like a day and a half. Every time Adam would think back to that day, whether he be five or nine or twelve or seventeen, the hour felt endlessly longer, impossibly longer. Maybe when he was forty, Adam would find he was still lost in those woods, maybe. Sat on a tree trunk or trying to squeeze himself in a tree’s cavity or simply sat on the floor, among the dust and earth and rocks, trying not to cry, failing not to cry, wondering why he was so scared of never finding his way back if that was all he wanted.

A tree was in his way, Adam thought. All of nine years old and all too tired for such a small, sad creature. Adam was small for his age, people said. Adam curled himself up smaller, people said, Adam was already small enough, he already tripped over his own body enough, people said, Adam was probably going to grow into his body, people said. He didn’t know what any of that meant; he didn’t care for any of it either.

A tree was in his way. Not really. Adam hadn’t noticed how far off the path he’d wandered. But it was tall. Sturdy. Gnarled in a lovely way, something that was there as creatures were born and died, something that sucked up the nutrients from dead things of centuries and seconds. Adam was scared of this tree, he thought. He was scared of it and he loved it in equal degrees, for managing to find the strength to put down its roots here of all places, living and standing hunched over for centuries. He wanted to tear it apart. He wanted to call it stupid for deciding to stay here of all places, for never being able to leave, for living despite all that. Adam was so tired.

He wanted to crawl inside. And so he did. So rarely did he want to do something and decide, suddenly, that he would do it. So rarely did he get the privilege of being decisive. So rarely was he allowed to breathe without thinking.

The world is a circle. Time is an ocean you can walk across. Time is one large, round ocean. Adam walked home on the ley line every day, and the tree was just a normal tree, but Adam was not a normal boy, to the chagrin of himself and everyone around him, to varying degrees. 

The tree was just a normal tree but Adam loved and hated it and the ley line knew him in its sleep knew him like the back of his hand Cabeswater thrummed through the miles and miles of the world occupied by its young and dormant kings Cabeswater thrummed through the hearts of these children that did not know its face or name or heart but simply heard its beat in theirs and thought it theirs too, and it was, kind of.

Adam fell asleep in the crook of a tree, and he did not wake up for years, not really, but hours passed and days passed and when he woke up the sun had not moved but he had shifted a little, a little more to the left. And then he walked home, and his heart thrummed with the sounds of two creatures filling in the silence of each off-beat.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me @[repressionattic](https://repressionattic.tumblr.com)


End file.
